


The Artist Formerly Known As

by whistlejacket



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 07:01:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whistlejacket/pseuds/whistlejacket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having reached the impossible, dead-end age of 23, Hermione Granger finds herself at loose ends and in the grip of apathy and depression. A chance article in a Muggle newspaper leads her on a hunt for Severus Snape, missing since he woke from a coma six months after the Final Battle. While struggling to regain something approaching a life, she finds help in the unlikely person of Draco Malfoy--and science fiction novels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.

1.

Low lighting. Better for viewing the work, or that he didn’t care for bright lights. Both had been said. The gallery was packed; such a throng was uncomfortable, but she could not have missed this opening. The wine glass in her hand was empty, no one offering to either fill it or take it away. She wasn’t sure which she would rather. 

Glimpses of him through the crowd: sharp white of an envelope’s edge, calligraphy black, unknown letters in a language she’d memorized but had never spoken. She’d spent two years trying to decipher him. She always arrived at the same blank canvas. She wondered, not for the first time, if the message was in his work. 

Paint on canvas the slap of a hand on a cheek, the crush of boots on bloodied fields of clover. 

The hour turned into two. She couldn’t get close to him; like his work, he was untouchable. Unapproachable. And whatever she’d come for tonight, she could no longer put a finger on it. She’d felt like this once before, on a beach six months after the Final Battle. After three days of sitting on damp sand, tracing the same symbols over and over beside her, around her, the waves had started to speak to her, and just as quickly, they’d stopped. She knew—somewhere, he was waking up. 

She didn’t know what that meant.

A year later, he was gone. House empty but for the nastiest of brown spiders and a faint residue of stale breath, held in for thirty-eight years.

In a coffee shop, a year after that, reading the Sunday paper: A picture of something, maybe Hogwarts if one squinted—if one were terrified enough to hope. A new artist being heralded as the best new abstract artist in London. The world. Shreds of him appearing in this place, that. All of that paint reminding her of something, but edging nowhere into her brain. The colors. Such colors. The accolades grew, his reclusiveness deepened, but now, here, in a white-on-white gallery in Shoreditch, the man made an appearance.

An appearance. 

Of what?

Her brain, always knocking full-tilt through the universe of knowledge, sputtered out at last. She needed sleep. 

She managed to snag a harried waiter. He filled her glass with a grumpy slosh and left. She took one sip and went outside, handing it to a homeless man sitting on a crate one storefront over.

“I’m not sure Don would approve.”

She stiffened. Turned. He stood right there before her, black shirt, black jeans. Black hair.  
“Giving away his pinot noir.” He shook his head.

“I…”

“Don’t have the money for that bottle of wine. And you certainly don’t have the money for one of my pieces.”

She would’ve snapped at him, but it was the truth. 

She stared. 

“Snake,” he said.

She flushed red. She’d been staring at his missing ear. Or rather, the place where his left ear should’ve been.

“I’m sorry; that’s so rude of me.” She could barely catch her breath.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t wake up deciding to be a concert violinist, hm?”

She looked up. A trace of a smile existed and went extinct. But she’d seen it.

From the doorway, a rush of noise. A man in a white blazer leaned out. “Stephen! Come inside. Your fans want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to them!”

The man in the blazer gestured, irritably. The artist formerly known as Severus Snape began to stalk away. Paused. Turned around and strode up to her, taking a hand out of his pocket and cupping her perfectly fine ear. 

“Come by at eleven,” he whispered. 

As he walked away, he turned one last time at the door. “Goodnight, Hermione.”

Her glamour washed away in a flood of surprise.

*

He’d been right. She didn’t have the money for one of his paintings. Then again, few people she knew would have that sort of disposable income. Pureblood family fortunes had trickled into the Ministry following the War, trifling amounts that revealed the extent to which Voldemort had bled them. Freed of their fortunes, but not awash in humility, they’d been a parade of proud faces turning to dust in front of her. Azkaban, restoration complete, was a mouse hole on dark tides, the gleaming, bitter eyes of its new residents staring down sentences of a lifetime or two.

She’d run into Draco Malfoy. Bought him a drink at a wizarding pub on the coast, its porthole windows revealing wedges of the prison on the horizon. She wore her official Ministry robes; he was in jeans and freshly shaved. He’d asked about Crookshanks, of all things. Said he had a cat himself these days, a little white one—

_Crooks is a Kneazle._

A stutter, a flash across his gray eyes that reminded her of early summer evenings promising rains that never came.

_Yes, of course. Of course._

On the way out, he’d touched her arm. _My father, he…Can you…_

She saved them both the embarrassment, telling him she had to leave, was expected back at the office.

Snape wore jeans. Was down an ear but would never, she was certain, ask her for anything.

She had stared at the ancient cuckoo clock over the cash register, wondering if perhaps a hobby would be good for Draco. He had nothing now, after all.

Strangely, she felt the same.

Ah, but not true, not true.

She had Snape.

It was 10:25.

*

A bout of contrariness—common since the War—nearly prevented her from going. After a second mad circle up the street from the gallery, she strode down to confront the issue.

“How did you know who I was?”

He scowled. Pointed up the street. “If you’re going to behave like a rabid dog, don’t do it under a streetlight.”

She wavered. “I asked a question.”

“I’m missing a fucking ear, not part of my brain.”

“They said your memory--”

“They said. They said. That is the entire basis of every single piece of information you possess. For fuck’s sake, Hermione, when are you going to learn by instinct, by intuitive reasoning?”

“When instinct and intuitive reasoning have well-researched and substantiated articles published in any one of five reputable journals, Muggle or wizard.” She hesitated. “I thought that if you’d forget anyone, or anything, it would be me.”

“There were times at Hogwarts when I dearly wished to forget you. What are you doing here?”

The lights in the gallery blinked off, leaving them standing in shadow. The front door opened, and the proprietor edged out, canvas beneath his arm. Keys jingled as he locked the door, slid the iron grate down and locked that as well.

“Not exactly a triumph, Stephen. This whole hostile artist image isn’t making you beloved with the public.”

“They’re buying my work, not me. How much?”

The man put a cheque in Snape’s hand. “Enough to get yourself some more paint, I suppose. Listen, when people buy art, they want the man behind that art to at least smile when they do so. They don’t want to be made to feel as if they’re being spat upon, as if their money is something that man would scrape off his shoe. A bit of gratitude goes a long way.”

“I’ll be grateful when my ‘adoring’ public decides to fuck off and leave me alone,” said Snape, but Hermione rather thought he was lying. 

“It may happen sooner than you think, if you continue being disrespectful to the critics and, more importantly, the folk with the expendable income.” He turned a hazy smile to Hermione. “Young woman, a bit of advice to you: You are not his muse. You will not be his muse. In the morning, your face won’t be gracing his canvases, but will be standing outside his flat, and trust me, he won’t even remember your name.” He walked off, hefting the canvas and adjusting his white bowler hat. “As sweet as a three-headed dog, that one.”

Hermione stood in shock, Snape not looking at her at all, but lighting a cigarette within cupped palms. After a moment, he glanced over, puffed, and said, “I’ll probably remember your name. Come on.”

And an hour and four stops later, Hermione emerged from the sickly fluorescence of the Underground to find herself on an anonymous, dark street, following Severus Snape to his flat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione falters, and five a.m. comes around too soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I do not speak French (or Spanish, or any other language that may pop up in this story). Italics will be used to indicate those words spoken in another language. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, for the kudos, and this time--
> 
> Thank you, lovely S: spirit, or the eloquence of one's soul, spoken by another in splinters.

2.

She’d been to Spinner’s End. Poked around a bit. Or more than a bit.  


This was nothing like Spinner’s End.  


In place of empty, filmy potions bottles were rolled tubes of paint. Instead of shelves and piles and heaps of books, there were canvases, wooden frames, hammers. Dinged tins jammed with brushes, their bristles sleek.  


It smelled like turpentine and stale cigarettes. Orange peels littered a windowsill.  


He flicked a finger, and the heavy drapes over the windows flung back. Her eyes narrowed: one reason the wizarding community wasn’t overly concerned with a missing Snape was that he’d had his wand confiscated. She’d seen it herself in the Department of Mysteries, deliberately hidden behind a hippogriff’s bronzed paw and a Pharaoh’s semi-sentient mummified skull.  


She hadn’t touched it. Just looked.  


He was on the wandless list, along with known former Death Eaters. Illegal to sell him a wand. Illegal for him to purchase, handle or in any way possess a wand. They had, she’d been told, been a step away from magically neutering him – a process much like the Dementor’s Kiss, but instead of a soul, it sucked away one’s magic. Or maybe it was the same. At any rate, Snape didn’t seem like any artificial Squib she’d come across, and the lack of a wand – much like his lack of an ear – seemed of no consequence.  


“Do you bring many women back here?” she asked, coughing up boldness to hide her fear.  


“Here? No, you’re the first.” He waited, watching.  


Her brain clicked back onto the track, a roar of its engine as she smiled back at him. “Haven’t been here long, have you?”  


He shrugged.  


“Why did you let me come here?”  


“Fewer questions. Do what you do best, Hermione – expound.”  


“Expound? On what?”  


“Whatever that mire of synapses wishes to produce.”  


“I’m not sure I--”  


“Speak! Or go home.” He slid a canvas from behind others. A quarter of it was filled with bright strokes of persimmon and moss. “If you throat begins to hurt, there is water in the kitchen. I wouldn’t drink it if I were you.”  


His back was to her. His shirt had stripes. It was probably cotton. Or a cotton-blend. The majority of the world’s cotton now came from China, or maybe India.  


She’d said the correct things in school, even if he hadn’t recognized the answers. Or her. She’d said things perfectly when she planned their meetings. When she was hot on his trail. When no one else was around.  


He mixed colors on a palette, slowly. She despaired. All she could think to say was—  


“Originally, you know, cotton came from areas like Pakistan. Arabic countries. The word is actually derived from the Arabic--”  


“Do you speak Arabic?”  


She shook her head, though he couldn’t see. “No.”  


“Pity. Any other languages you do know besides English?”  


“Latin, of course. A bit of French.”  


“Tell me why, in French, you came here tonight.”  


“I don’t know that much.”  


“You don’t know that much French, or you don’t know why you came?” The first touch of the brush to canvas. A slightly lighter shade than moss. Avocado, perhaps. Or did paints have names like nail polish? Grassy Dawn--  


“Answer me,” he snapped, turning his head over his shoulder.  


The train, derailing with such ease these days, shoved itself back on track.  


“I can’t say I know much of either,” she said, straightening up.  


He daubed, paused, tapped the canvas with his brush again. "I don't care if you speak truths or lies. Just speak. Preferably in another language."  


She decided on half-truths. And French.

#

She made things up when she couldn't remember the word: _solitary_ became _crow_ , for instance. And there was no word for what happened at the Burrow that one night, so she chose _night_ , and _morning_ , and _night_ again.  


He didn't appear to be listening,though he sometimes looked at her in sidelong glances that made her feel like something in a jar on a shelf. Something black and small and only useful in small amounts. And with other ingredients. Nothing exceptional on its own. 

Hours passed. She forgot, and drank water from the tap. He made tea, pots of tea that he consumed as a river, Ceylon brown, a drop of milk. Too much sugar. He didn't offer her any.  


There were silences that lasted until she woke up, and realized it had been forty-five minutes. He didn't stop painting, didn't seem to be tired at all.  


Perhaps, she thought as five a.m. neared, it didn't matter if he listened, or if he understood. Was this the meaning of finding him? If she went looking and came upon her own self, would it matter if her other self understood? It was enough, sometimes, to speak. When said aloud, the words took flight, newborn, as if they hadn't existed for a thousand years in her head, and damp-winged, flew out the window, orange peels in their wake.  


Light-bearing insights were only good for dissecting others. She dismissed the potential self-examination – which of course had been going on for years in that vast iceberg below the surface, below the id – and concentrated on a word for _I must go, but can I come back?_  


He stepped back from the canvas at a quarter to six. The curtains were limned in peach as the city became illuminated. From the single light bulb, she could blearily make out the painting.  


It was a corridor, but made out of green, as if it was moss-covered. She blinked, and it became a toad. It reminded her of Neville's toad. When she stood, it was nothing at all.  


"Get out," he said. "If you learn another language, and can speak it passably, return. Your French is abominable."  


She put on her coat, and went to the door. She stopped before closing it behind her, and saw him watching. He almost looked like he wanted her to say one more thing. She couldn't think of a single word.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> French lessons are commenced.

3.

Hermione Granger might have been losing her mind, but she still arrived promptly at work each day. There were papers waiting – did they multiply overnight? Should she segregate them so as to prevent unwanted forms? Rubber bands, perhaps?

She was as yet a junior associate, but it was quite a leap from junior-junior associate. Some said she'd got this far because of her name. Her neck grew red hot when she heard such whisperings. Anyone who knew her knew that it was one hundred percent hard work. One thousand percent, even.

One thousand?

She looked up. Across the ocean of paperwork sat Draco Malfoy. He was talking too fast, face screwed up in a queasy smile as if he was about to puke on her desk. Talking about how he'd always known she would do something, get far. He'd uttered the "one thousand percent."

"Some of us can't get by on our name," she said, a silly thing. Petty. It had been said about her, so why needle a man who had lost everything, including whatever luster his surname had previously possessed?

His smile faltered. He sat back in his chair, body loosening for the first time since she'd seen him. 

"Not unless it's Potter. And how is the golden boy, these days?"  


"Do you care?" She wove a quill between her fingers, hand hovering over parchment.  


"Yes. I do." His fingers rubbed the arms of the chair. "Has Potter ever mentioned me? Or my father?"  


She answered him honestly. "No. Not once."  


It stung worse than the jape about his name. She could see it on his face. She remembered that for Draco, every emotion played across his features in a continuous sliding canvas. She thought that she should tell him to put his brushes away, let the canvas stay blank, but who was she to give advice when anyone, anybody at all, could tell her that she ought to stay far away from Severus Snape?  


Perhaps she and Draco were both vulnerable. Or had lost their senses.  


" _If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him_."  


"What? What did you say?" The quill paused its incessant movement.  


"I said that if there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him. It's a famous expression."  


"Was that French?"  


"Why? Is it illegal for me to speak French now?" He sneered. "Perhaps next, the Ministry will put a binding spell on my cock so that I can only fuck Muggles."  


"For now," Hermione said, "foreign languages are acceptable. And I hear you only fuck Muggles anyway, so you don't have to worry about that."  


He stood, the chair scraping across the floor, and she kept her eyes trained on his face.  


"I only want," he said in a low voice, "to see my father. To make sure he's all right."  


"He's in Azkaban. He's not all right."  


"No. You're right. He's not. But if I could see him more than once a month, and if I could bring him a few things--"  


"Nothing on the visitor that could be considered outside contraband may be brought inside the prison. Section 14--"  


He made a noise of frustration. "Hermione, do you know what it's like in there?"  


She considered. She had toured the prison when the restoration had been completed. She had seen some of the prisoners in their cells. Still, she did not think she knew what it was like.  


Draco leaned forward, gripping the edge of her desk. "He's given up. He's renounced the Dark Lord and all he stood for. Apologized. He's a changed man. They've let other Death Eaters go. Why not him? Why is he in there for life? Hm? Do you know the answer to that?"  


She was afraid to tell him that she didn't know any answers these days. Instead, she said, "Do you speak French? You never answered me."  


He stood back, arms crossed. The cuffs of his black shirt were worn and fraying, one button missing. " _I speak French._ "  


"Would you teach me? If I paid you?"  


He dropped his arms. "What?"  


"It could be a way for you to earn extra money. I want to learn."  


"I don't need your money." He cocked his head. "But I could teach you."  


"When can we start?"  


"Get me an extra visit this month, and we'll start after that."  


It would involve some pulling of strings. She might have to actually put her name to use. It felt degrading, somehow, to do so. But it didn't matter.  


"I'll let you know."  


"You do that." He plucked his coat from the hook. "And make it soon. I find my grasp of the language slipping every day."  


She had to smile. This was a bit of the old Draco, however vile. Maybe there was hope for both of them.  


"Should you find that the language completely escapes you, I hope you will understand that, in that case, my ability to garner anything extra for you or your father, any benefits at all, will completely elude me, as well." She twirled her wand in her fingers. "I want nothing more than to learn to speak French passably."  


Another half-truth. So much easier than outright lies, and far simpler than the whole truth.  


Draco, another of the walking wandless, zipped his coat and stepped out of her office.  


She looked down, surprised to find that she had been mindlessly doodling on a tertiary copy of the auror's report of incident no. 23361: circling tunnels, and somehow, the black ink in her quill had changed to moss green. 

#

When Draco appeared at her office the next week, she had to resist making references to dogs, to trained circus animals. His coat was deep green, the outrageous ruff on his shirt collar, light blue edged in navy.  


He spoke first, immediately. " _Merci."_  


"You're welcome, Draco." His name stuck in her throat, was garbled up into the air. If he noticed, he said nothing.  


" _De rien,_ " he said. "Try it again. _Merci,_ Hermione."  


" _De rien,_ Draco." 

"Now 'please'. Sil--"  


" _Sil vous plait_."  


He scowled. "On my command only. _Sil vous plait, Draco."_

" _Sil vous plait,_ Draco."  


"Again."  


"I think I've got that one."  


"Again."  


She narrowed her eyes. " _Sil vous plait,_ Draco, if you want to hear me beg, then offer me something worth begging for."  


He smiled, sharp white teeth like a fox's bared on one side as he nodded. "All right then. Let's start with the very basics. You should be able to handle those."  


And so it was counting, and cat and dog and she asked the word for ferret, which he tight-lipped ignored, and spoon and cup and ham and how to order coffee. There were book titles, translated as he walked around her office. He made them sound erotic. She could not leer when she said, "Adjunct Binding Issues of the Seventh Caucus," and he seemed disappointed. She tried harder.  


"That's enough for today."  


"When will you return?"  


"I won't."  


"Oh, no. Surely an extra visit with your father was worth more than one lesson." She scowled, preparing for an argument.  


He nodded. "Indeed, it was. But I won't come here." He paused, and she had a sudden vision of Draco in his Muggle outfits, although outlandish enough to almost pass for traditional wizarding garb, hiding his famous face as he walked the corridors of the Ministry. "Perhaps another venue."  


"It is a bit uncomfortable in here."  


"I can't stand this chair." He snarled as if it had peed on his leg. "Why don't you come to my place? You can meet my cat."  


"Do you say that to all the girls?"  


"Only the homely ones that probably have five or six of their own. But of course, you've got a Kneazle. It's not the same at all."  


"No, it's not the same." She considered. "Not your place. Why not Blooms and Bark?"  


"Because every witch with a broken heart goes there after work to sob into her tea cup." He studied her. "You know, their Pink Dragonlily Chamomile is quite calming for the hysterical types."  


"I'm allergic to dragonlily," she said. "What about a park? We can sit outside--"  


"What about your place?"  


"Absolutely not."  


"It's not as if anyone would see me there." At her hard stare, he uttered an exasperated sigh. "I'm not stalking you, Hermione. Everyone knows that you haven't got any friends. Harry and Ginny tour almost constantly, you and Ron were finished a year ago, and he's moved on. In rather spectacular fashion, I might add. Stop it. I'm only telling the truth."  


At least one of them was. She wouldn't let him see how awfully, despicably true, though.  


He went on. "And can you honestly say that you were adept at frivolous social relationships in school? Thank goodness for Crooks, else you might not even exist at all."  


"Draco! One's value or terms of existence do not depend on with whom or how many one frolics with."  


Draco laughed, silver and green, a hand over his mouth. The edge of his ridiculous ruffled collar shook.  


"Really, it takes next to nothing to rile you up. You ought to work on that. However," he said, "if you could learn to debate in French, it might sound marginally less absurd. My place. Friday night. Eight. And don't tell me you've got plans. You're not going anywhere on a Friday night because you're probably in your jammies the moment you get home. Tell me, have they got little scottie dogs on them? Or bunnies?"  


"Out."  


He stood, adjusting his sleeves so that ruffled cuffs peeked out from the green velvet of the jacket.  


"You know where I live. If you want to speak French, you'll be there. And I don't tolerate tardiness."  


He swept out, as smoothly as if he'd Disapparated. She realized that she'd forgot to ask him about his visit with his father. It would have been polite. But somehow, she didn't care. She meant to learn as much employable French as she could on Friday, and then she'd find Snape again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An avalanche occurs.

4.

Draco hadn't been impressed by the miniscule amount of practical French she knew, but if he managed only a glimpse of her living room on Thursday night, he might have been awe-stricken by her powers of research and organization.

Subscriptions to all major and minor art magazines, even some short enough to be more flyer than magazine, had been arriving at her flat with constancy for seven months. Recent issues, with mentions of Snape or photos of his art – he sometimes debuted new pieces under pseudonyms, but the work was unmistakably his – were laid out, relevant articles highlighted and circled and underlined. On the wall hung a map; for purposes of her current search, all the latest sightings were violet dots with dates attached. A tap of her wand brought cities to the fore; he sometimes duped several galleries in a city. Or were they? Perhaps they knew who he was as well as she did. She wondered at the network of art enthusiasts, how many were key to Snape's covert showings. He'd shown pieces in a car park once, with the work set against bumpers. It had remained there for three hours, until all the paintings were sold. A nice young couple on their way back from the supermarket had wondered at the odd lighting and, bags in hand, gone up to see.

Hermione had heard about the couple, who were delighted to find that their seventy-five pounds had bought them an extraordinary find. Understandably, they hadn't wanted to part with the painting for Hermione's offer of triple what they'd paid. They already had half a dozen offers for twenty times, but they were quite pleased with the way the painting went with their décor.

She sometimes imagined telling Snape that his abstract portrait of Rowena Ravenclaw went well with IKEA furnishings. If he knew what IKEA was, however, she risked a solid curse. 

On another wall was a list of his pseudonyms, his past official appearances, and the names of some notable buyers in whose homes his work hung. 

None were witches or wizards.

She also now had parchment with one item at the top: the address of the flat she'd visited. It was vacant at present, though the orange peels remained and so had a rusted tin with a single brush, stiff-bristled and handle cracked. The brush she'd nicked while the landlord wasn't looking, though she doubted he would've cared anyway if she took it. She'd asked about the previous tenant. He'd given her an odd look. No one had been in the place for some time, over a year. 

Snug in her own, cozy, cluttered flat, she stared at the address, and her eyes drifted to the colored thread taut across the map. The violet dots, she was sure, meant little. They were already ancient history, and Snape was somewhere cultivating a new identity, in another anonymous flat, eating oranges and dropping the peels carelessly onto dusty floors. Or perhaps he'd moved on to grapes, plump green ones. 

Another painting was inchoate, and she wasn't there to witness its evolution. She couldn't say she deserved to see it, anymore than she deserved to be alive, to have reached the impossible, dead-end age of twenty-three. 

What did Snape deserve? Had he received it already? Was there anything left for either of them?

There was always that famous abyss, but she found that whenever she stared into it, she only saw threads, and dots, and endless, endless reams of paper fluttering to the floor around her. 

 

*

 

A woman putting her key into her door saw Hermione, who hadn't done a sneaky thing in several years, and Hermione managed a brave smile.

_I am going in, madam. And I am not like the others; no, I am not._

But of course she was. She was muddle-headed and silly and the only thing that prevented her from being exactly like every other girl who came to his flat was the wand in her coat. And the fact that she did not plan to sleep with Draco, a thought that didn't bear thinking. 

She rapped on the door rather harder than intended; a policeman or collections agent would've been proud. 

The door became a gray sky, shifting clouds and crows passing over. A breeze caught her hair from the storm swirling within; she put a wary hand into her coat, for her wand.

It became solid wood again, a deep green, almost black, and it opened to a sleep-eyed Draco in a bulky wool jumper and trousers. A white cat nearly slipped out; he snatched it up.

"You're not supposed to go out," he said to its purring, green-eyed face. "You know that." 

He nodded to her. "Hermione. Come in."

"Your neighbor saw me," she said, quite stupidly.

"I'll have to Obliviate her," he said, and at her shocked look, he laughed. "Gryffindors are so gullible. And always primed to see the worst in a Slytherin."

"Not true," she said. "We also note your lack of fashion sense."

He dropped the cat on the floor. "Watch Sid, will you? He tends to get into things he shouldn't."

She would've asked what things the cat wasn't supposed to get into, but Draco had gone to the kitchen, leaving her standing in the middle of the lounge, a narrow room with two loveseats and a table, and enough books on the walls that one wondered at the strength of the floors. She approved.

The shelves were obviously homemade, planks of unfinished wood attached to the walls by a system of large nails and brackets that seemed to have been installed by someone unfamiliar with a hammer. Or nails and brackets. A shelving system, overall, unlikely to hold up. She cast a small spell to strengthen them. The books themselves...

She had never quite imagined Draco as a reader of pulp science fiction. Or as a reader, come to it.

Sid jumped from loveseat to shelf over a radiator, this one specifically reserved for a cat. It had a plush bed in tiger stripes and a little stuffed catnip mouse. The cat batted the mouse, bit it, stopped and stared up at her.

"I'm Hermione," she said. "You probably know that already."

The cat practiced disemboweling its toy. She felt ridiculous talking to it, but Crooks had been ignoring her for months. And while it was not a Kneazle, something about it seemed intelligent. Draco's words echoed in her head; the loneliness she'd nearly perfected at keeping at bay crept further in. 

"Do you speak French, Sid?" she asked, petting its long, slim body, so unlike Crooks's. 

Sid bit her hand.

"Ow!"

"Well, why were you petting him when he's clearly in kill mode?" Draco put down two glasses of wine and a bottle, and reached for her hand. She yanked it back.

"It's fine. He didn't even break skin. My fault, really."

"As I said." He grabbed her hand. "Stop it. Let me see. You'll need to wash that, anyway. Loo's over there."

In the bathroom, scrubbing her hand, she heard him talking to Sid.

"Did that awful woman try to pet you? Poor Sid."

Awful woman! He apparently didn't want to see his father very badly. 

When she returned, he was cuddling the cat and smirking at her. It was going to be a long night.

"Let's get to it, shall we?" She sat down and brought out a notebook. "Verbs. I'm terrible at conjugating."

"So I've heard." That smirk again. "I'm amazing, in case you were wondering."

Steely-eyed, she continued. "Has. Have. Had. Now, in some cases--"

"What do you want to learn French for, anyway? Investigating some wizard who only speaks French?"

"No. And it's none of your business why. Has--"

"Are you planning to visit France? Paris is great, but there are some incredible places in the countryside, you know."

"I'm sure there are. Draco, we--"

"Have you got a boyfriend there?" He dropped the cat, picked up a wine glass. Tasted it. "Can't speak his language? You only speak the language of love, is that it?"

"Er..."

"It's always about a man. Well, unless you are a man. Then it's about a woman." He downed the glass. "Boyfriend in another country. Sounds suspicious. But you're not the lying type. So, long distance relationship. Bound to fail, you know. And you don't strike me as the get-it-while-you-can type, so you should know that putting all your eggs in a basket hundreds of miles away is bad odds."

"What are you talking about? There is no boyfriend in France."

"Here? He's in good old England? A Frenchman in England, and of all the birds he could choose, he chooses Hermione Granger. Unbelievable."

She stood. "What's unbelievable is your utter lack of respect. I didn't expect you to be professional; I just expected you to do the minimum required to teach me to speak passable French. In return, I remind you, for certain privileges not normally extended to the public."

"Certain privileges. Can't you even try to make it sound a bit sexy? _Certain privileges_." He poured more wine – the last few drops, she realized. The bottle had been nearly empty before she'd even arrived. "You sound all, you know, Umbridge-y. Umbridge-ish."

There was no comparison in the world more wounding, but she cringed, instead, not at the insult, but at the insight: Draco was drunk. 

"Perhaps if you say it in French," he said, swaying towards her. " _Certain privileges. Certain privileges._ Repeat."

"Our deal," she said, "is over."

"The hell it is." He grabbed her arm, and she whirled, wand in hand. He snarled. "Don't threaten me. Do you know who I am? How dare you."

"Hands off, Draco. Now."

"Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy," he said, and grasped her harder, yanking her close for a wine-perfumed kiss. 

Her wand snapped in front of his face. He froze.

And all around, the books on their precarious shelves trembled, and in a great, rumbling roar, toppled to the floor. Sid screeched, bolting from his shelf past tumbling books. The wine glasses shattered, and Hermione jerked away, nearly slipping on a yellowing copy of Heinlein's _Between Planets_.

"How dare—How could..."

But she was already out the door.

There was no neighbor to witness her hasty exit, but from a window, poking a round, white head through dirty curtains, Sid watched, big-eyed and hunched. 

Hermione wondered how long it would take to collect and organize the books and fix the shelves without magic. Some time, she imagined. Quite some time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I nearly wrote the chapter summary as, "In which there is not enough Snape for some people ;)" because I like emoticons and because it's true. 
> 
> Will there be Snape forthwith, forbearing, forsooth? Of course, of course.
> 
> ;)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An invitation arrives.

She hadn't needed Draco; she knew this. There were Muggle books aplenty, not to mention audio books. And there were any number of spells that would translate spoken words into the listener's own language. Snape would never allow a translation device, though. Still, she could easily learn on her own.

For a moment, she hadn't wanted to learn on her own.

If the hours Hermione had spent in her life reading and learning were toted up – solitary hours, book on her knees, pressing her hair back –she imagined they would add up to Spinster, Guaranteed One Hundred Years (plus or minus two Kneazles). They would add up to vats of tea, mindlessly warmed and re-warmed as she absorbed knowledge and forgot to sip.

Research and education.

For a brief time in her teens, Hermione had known that it was all in the service of friendship, of obtaining said friendship. Her value, then, was proven. And she'd received just rewards. For Ron's love had been true, and his eventual physical company all she'd hoped. And Harry's love was equally true. If she still had one now but not the other, well, it was all her fault, really.

Worse, she'd gone into her current position because it was essentially a helpmeet for Harry and Ron. Aurors and lawyers went hand-in-hand.

Somewhere along the way, she'd fallen off the map. Off the edge of the world. Ron might not care, but Harry did, in his own way. Still, neither of them was much in her life these days. No one was, really.

Hermione Granger was not about to feel sorry for herself. She reminded herself this as she marched to her office, determined to clear the waiting stack of paperwork, and to do so with fairness and devotion to justice. And when she was through being reasonable and righteous, she would learn to speaking fucking French like a fucking native.

There was only one fucking problem.

Draco was outside her office. It was Monday morning, she'd spent the weekend engaged in some seriously off-kilter self-doubt, ankles-deep in thread and paper, sketching wild hypotheses in the air and drinking small amounts of blackberry brandy when she wanted to give in to the tears.

And now Draco had returned. Dressed in another ridiculous outfit: lime green shirt, gray jacket and sharply pressed charcoal wool trousers. He plucked the pale green carnation from his lapel and handed it to her.

" _For the mademoiselle_ ," he said. " _With my apologies_."

She ignored it. "Out before I summon security."

"May I please tell you how sorry I am first?"

She opened the door. "You just did. Out."

He wedged a leg through, followed by the rest of him.

"Please, Hermione. I'm only going to ask this once. As a former classmate --"

"That aided and abetted the potential murder of my best friend."

"I understand if you don't want to listen to me, or if you won't help my father any longer, or help me." He took a breath. "Look, you might as well throw me in Azkaban, too. I feel horrible, and there is nothing – nothing – in this world I regret more. Yes. I took my one chance at having a friend, a real friend from what used be to my world, and I blew it."

"It's still your world. It's all our world. Everything. Muggle and wizard, both." But as she said it, she knew she didn't believe it. Whatever world Hermione Granger belonged to, it was not this one. She was struck at how bleak and uninviting her office looked. As if it were the office of a stranger.

"I know that. I do. But..." He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling blonde locks into spiking. "Hermione, it's all gone for me. Do you understand that? And I'm sorry, I truly, truly am. I didn't know how to handle it, having someone from... that section of the world in my home. And a woman, to boot. It's been different for me. Everything... everything is different."

Her heart had never learned the art of hardening itself to such pleas, but still, she could forgive him, while yet not associating with him again.

She opened her mouth to say so, when the door opened and her harried assistant brought in a stack of papers.

"Good morning, Miss Granger."

"Thank you, Evelyn."

Evelyn slipped out with a raised eyebrow and not a word. Draco placed the carnation atop the stack.

"Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry."

He nodded once, backed away, turned for the door.

Damn him.

"Draco."

He stopped, caution writ upon his face.

"I forgive you. And," she said, taking a breath, "I understand. I really do."

He lit up. Silver and green fireworks over his head, she could almost see them.

"Fantastic. _Friends?_ " He stuck out his hand.

" _Oui. Friends_."

Tonight, seven, a little pub by her house. Everything to be said in French.

Perhaps, she mused, it was not because she was soft-hearted, but because she was drawn to Draco's resilience. More than a language, he had something else he could teach her: how to move the fuck on.

It was only after he'd left that she noticed the postcard-sized flyer on the floor by the door, announcing the debut collection of artist G. X. at the Gallery Rentz, that night at eight.

She rushed into the corridor, but whoever had left it was gone. Hermione, as always, was a step behind.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course, ghosts do not exist.

6.

She dressed for Snape, though Draco smiled when she sat down as if she'd dressed for him. As if, despite the bookshelves, despite their conversation in her office, his ego could not grasp that she did not find him attractive. Powerfully desirable.

She sighed.

Draco wore jeans, dark and slim, and a pale lilac t-shirt. She noticed the tattoo on his forearm: a daffodil, lined in black, colored in pale yellow. It stood alone; no banner, no script beneath; a single flower.

The carnation she had set into a potions flask and stood upon a shelf, where its candy-colored petals had caught her eye all day.

Presumptuous as ever, he'd ordered two glasses of wine for them.

_"What would mademoiselle like to learn tonight?"_

_"How to order wine for myself,"_ she said, straightening her blouse.

_"Ah, but that would require a knowledge of wine. As it happens, I am fluent in oenophilia as well."_

And so it went. The flirtatious talk on his side, the increasing exasperation on hers. She began to wonder if stacks of triple-copy forms and work reports wouldn't be less of a pain in the arse. Of course, they wouldn't be half as interesting.

She'd be a liar if she didn't admit, if only to herself, that Draco Malfoy was droll, quick, and intelligent, and that he kept her on her toes. She adored talking with Harry (when she saw him), but there was something about Draco – as if a witty, if slightly annoying, book had come to life, and she enjoyed flipping its pages.

She wriggled uncomfortably in her chair.

_"Have you replaced the book shelves?"_ she asked, diverting him from a long, pompous monologue on red wines of France.

He corrected her French, for the twenty-third time that evening, and grumbled that it had taken him years to assemble the collection; it couldn't be repaired in a day or two.

His mouth turned down in what she regarded as more or less characteristic Draco; though now that she thought of it, his face had been set that way for the last several years of school. Since their first visit, however, he'd been a bit less grim. More... amused.

_"Some of the books,"_ she said. _"They were... unexpected."_

He looked away. _"Light reading, something to pass the time."_

_"I wish,"_ she said slowly, " _that I had done some light reading. It's always been textbooks, and histories, and... I wish that I'd read some fantasy or science fiction. Or something."_

_"You know, they're not really light reading. Dick explored concepts of what it means to be human, what it means to exist. And Heinlein's notions of alienation, especially in regards to government and the common man, they're not just arbitrary housing for a mediocre storyline and plot, they're integral to his thesis."_

He went on. Hermione found this much more fascinating than his talk of wine, and though she struggled to understand every word, she grasped the essence of it. Here was a Draco with substance, a Draco she could converse with, a Draco who –

Time had run short. If she wanted to make the opening, she'd need to leave.

A month ago, the thought of seeing Snape in person would've had her cancelling this entire appointment, just so she could prepare. At the moment, she somewhat wished she could be in two places at once.

It didn't escape her that this was the most exciting evening she'd had in some time.

Draco frowned. Her excuses were clearly met with suspicion. She felt that she was lying to him (she was), and he knew it, and with surprise, she realized that his gruffness belied his hurt.

She blustered into English. "I'm so sorry, Draco, I really am. I was enjoying myself, but I've got to go. I told my parents I would meet them for dinner tonight, and I already pushed it back an hour, and—"

He stood, mimicking her in his perfect French as he repeated it.

_"Thank you, Draco."_ Hermione could be equally cold. _"I'll contact you for another lesson later this week."_

She snatched her coat from the back of the chair and threaded her way through the packed pub – when it had grown so busy? She could've sworn there were only a handful of people in the place when she'd arrived.

Walking into the strange darkness of an early October night, she blinked at the lights, at the putter of a car zipping past. The insulation of the pub stripped away, leaving her shivering, exposed.

A hand touched her shoulder. She spun, reaching for her wand, but it was only Draco.

"Listen," he said. "I've got a few suggestions, if you want to do a bit of 'light reading.' I'll drop them off to you this week sometime."

"That would be wonderful. I'd appreciate that." She smiled. "Thank you."

He nodded once and turned, striding away as if to war. There was a bus to catch, she supposed.

She slipped into the shadows and quietly Apparated.

#

She'd come at the place from down the street, sidling up to storefronts and peering ahead at the lights of the little gallery. The place was small, narrow, with none of the stark white walls or exposed brick of the high-end galleries. Plaster walls, cracked in spots, were daubed rotten cantaloupe and dun, and bare bulbs hung at random intersections of tiles from the dropped ceiling. After scoping out the interior, she joined the motley crowd within – a variety of ages, incomes, and none of them the wiser as to the artist's true identity.

"Knock-offs," she heard a man mutter to his companion.

And surely they could've been; none surpassed, or even matched, his previous level of brilliance. They lacked... passion? Was there a word for passion without heat? This bunch of paintings, however, lacked heat, lacked passion, lacked a remote sense of emotion for the subjects. But still, they were his. She could tell that much.

No one had wine; there was no hors d'oeuvres tray. No harried waiters. Just the curious, wandering past, and the critics, riding disappointment through life like one of the four horsemen.

And there was Hermione.

Each canvas bore her inspection. The paintings were new; although, she supposed it was possible she simply hadn't seen them before. Stamped with innovation, though it seemed to have gone awry somehow. A certain indistinct quality bled to their borders, as if the artist wasn't quite sure of himself. She recognized the Forbidden Forest, Hagrid's pumpkins in the foreground, the cottage squarely to one side, cut off. The colors were bleak but for the orange of the pumpkins. The eye rested on them again and again, drawn down to that spot. But the orange wasn't vibrant, wasn't the celebratory hue of autumn, but splotched with rot, the shadowy fingers of the Forest creeping in.

Not his best.

Neither was the next, or the one after. People spoke of the darkness, but instead of enveloping them, hinging on memories they'd never had, the work left them confused. Stilted.

But for one. Blurry, strokes slapped across the canvas in haste or hate, it choked her heart to see.

She touched the painting. Brought her fingers to her throat, her chest.

"I never thought I'd see him again," she whispered.

The artist, beside her, leaned in closer. Squinted.

"If I could stop seeing him, I'd be pleased." Sniffed. "He said if I painted him, he'd leave me alone. Fucking liar."

"His – You see..." She lowered her voice. "Professor Dumbledore's ghost?"

"Ghosts? There are no such things as ghosts. Don't you know that?" He scowled, eyeing her. "Did you get any better?"

" _Oui_. _A bit."_

"I will be the judge of your progress." He walked away, paused. "Are you coming? I haven't got all night."

A bored young man caught them at the door. "Going somewhere, Gaston?"

"Yes, a place that has drink, and that doesn't smell like dog piss in an alleyway."

They were waved away, the door shutting behind them, closing off the apathetic shuffling of the crowd.

"Will you still get paid?"

"If any sell. Galleries are full of self-important bollocks-snufflers, but they're largely not thieves."

"Did you really see Albus Dumbledore's ghost?"

He ducked into the entryway of a men's clothier, dark inside, the door shielded by bent iron.

"French, Hermione. A word of English the rest of the night and I will send you back to your miserable flat so fast you'll think they'd returned my wand to me."

_"I have seen your wand,"_ she said. _"In the Department of Mysteries."_

His eyes narrowed. Several seconds passed. "2 Willowgreen Road. Know it?"

She thought for a moment. " _Oui_."

He took her arm. "Take us there."

She spun, his grip tightening until it was all she felt, a steel band in the vortex.

#

It amounted to a gardener's shed, his new place. Skylights formed nearly half the roof, and his bed bore a suspicious likeness to a planting bench. Stone covered the floor, and an electric teakettle, cord dangling in useless indifference, sat on a rustic wood stepping stool.

It smelled like dirt and damp work gloves and paint. Canvases, empty and not, leaned everywhere. He picked one up; it was the strange moss tunnel he'd been working on when she'd last seen him.

The slight modifications he'd done to his face melted away; the familiar hooked nose pushed past the much smaller one, the hair fell out in straw clumps, replaced by glossy black strings. He tied his hair back immediately, picked up a brush, and turned to her.

She spoke before he could command it.

Where had he been? After the hospital, where had he gone? Why did he paint – where did he pick up his first brush, and what was it that arranged itself on the canvas? Why so many of Hogwarts?

Why hadn't she asked these before?

The first time, he'd commanded her to speak and she had, muddling her words, her history. A confession broken and peculiar, even to herself.

Which Hermione had that been? For now, Hermione tumbled French towards him, demanding answers even as the next query burst forth.

He seemed unperturbed. Her voice grew harsher, and he painted, glancing at her once in a while, mixing colors with the intensity he'd once put into potions.

The tunnel sharpened, corroded, and she wasn't certain at all of what it might be. She asked him about the painting, directing inquiries to his unyielding shoulders, to the knobs of bone at the back of his pale neck. He wiped his chin on his shoulder, peered at her, waited.

She opened her mouth and spoke.

Tea from the kettle, hot, strong. It soothed her throat. He opened another jar, but it was not turpentine or pigment; it was honey, eucalyptus. It dripped from the single spoon into both their cups. She rewarded him with _What do you think of other artists? Do you have contemporaries? Friends? Why did you never seek Harry? Draco? Me?_

Trembling fingers in the lost hours: three a.m. and the canvas was covered, covered again, and his waxy skin even paler. At last, he set down the brush, the palette. She stood by him.

She was all out of questions.

_"It's the library,"_ she said, in wonderment. _"The library, green. As if it's growing. As if it's a thousand years from now, and this is what's left of it. As if—"_

His kiss was hard. Everything smelled like paint, everything tasted like—

Tea.

His fingers wriggled underneath her jumper; he pulled her to him. The flickering overhead ceased; in the dark, the absolute dark, they stumbled to the bed. As unforgiving as it had seemed, but it bore their weight.

His fucking bore little resemblance to her imagination; but then, even on the loneliest nights, hand beneath her knickers, banishing the guilt away the moment it was conceived, there were gray areas. Areas such as the feel of his chest beneath her palm, how mechanical his breath, and the little hairs ticklish. His cock, of course. Its thickness surprised her. As did her resistance. Had it been that long since she'd done this? He seemed to relish it, pushing into her slowly, giving her the chance to breathe – a breath, push, a breath, slide – until they were locked together. Her chin rested in the crook of his shoulder.

He said,

She came and said things and he held her tighter for a second and she could feel him stiffen.

In a short time, the bed was too rigid. Fidgeting, then keeping still in case he shoved her off. At length, she whispered a spell to soften the boards, padding them. He grunted and slept on.

Dawn turned the glass overhead rose and peach. She watched the last of the purple recede, taking with it the stars. The kettle began to steam, to whimper. She got up and dressed and took one last look at the painting.

The library peered back, the sunlight of a distant future behind it.

It was worth a fortune.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Algae is stubborn. So is nostalgia, and dreams, and memories.

 

Of course it was to be expected that the garden shed was nearly empty a week later. The teakettle remained, a musty scent rising when the top was removed. Algae grew within, feeding on traces of liquid as if it had been unused for months. Re-homed, the kettle sat beside her sink, cord hanging, filling its spotless interior with clean water and boiling every morning at six-thirty-six. After two cups, the algae returned.

She wanted to ask Draco if he knew about Snape, if he had sensed his waking or was aware that the man walked free while Lucius yet hunkered in his cell. But Draco's only psychic connection, it seemed, was to the worlds within the books.

Outer space in the hands of Pohl or Niven or Herbert wasn't Muggle, wasn't magical. It existed inside a frame for Draco to exist as well, a place where he was resurrected on rocky Martian banks and within alien tombs. She could not admire his ability to convey his soul into the imagined worlds, anymore than she could be proud of herself for daydreams in which Snape touched her, over and over. They were both brief, provocative images, and equally unreal. Neither she nor Draco had much success in the real world; the other places, however, were sowed with seeds of hope. And appetite. But like the algae, the illusions returned for them both. The only difference was that Draco's helped him cope. Hers tormented her.

Still, the weeks following were filled with increasing amounts of decent wine, French and verbal exchange – her mind spun like a dozen tightrope walkers, all executing pirouettes while his performed dazzling feats of linguistic and philosophical prowess.

A part of her smirked, as if it had known this Draco had been there all along. Whether it had been Houses, his arrogance, or just the War, they had never been properly introduced. Now she curled her legs beneath her, sipped wine that she'd brought this time, and watched as he slipped another volume off the shelves, searching for a passage.

He found it and pointed it out to her, expecting her to translate.

Wine for the tongue, and... " _There is a lesson I learned at twelve – that the world does not end at the edge of a quad. There are people outside. The world does not end on the Fourth Level. There are people elsewhere. Neither does the world end with the Ship. If you want to accept life, you have to accept the whole bloody universe. The universe is filled with people, and there is not a single solitary spear carrier among them_."

She knocked about with _spear carrier_ , and Draco supplied the words.

Sid stretched on the sofa, Draco's hand stroking along his spine.

She thought of Snape with his brushes, how it must've been for him when he was alone with Dumbledore and the truth was like a beaten Phoenix between them. She thought of Harry, of Ron, of the particular corridor in the Department of Mysteries where one could stand and envision Mr. Weasley brutalized by Nagini.

" _I think_ ," she said, " _that most every person is a spear carrier_."

" _Not to them_ ," he said. " _In their lives, they are the maestros_. _The heroes. Even if they're Gregory Goyle, or Pansy."_ He held up Sid by the armpits, looking deep into the cat's green eyes.

She could tell he was lost in nostalgia, the kind that is not warmed by sunlight of summers past, but the kind that takes up space in the chinks between stones in winter. _"I would have agreed with you once. Not now._ "

_"Not everyone is the hero, then? So some are just, what, assistant to the hero? Junior associate to the hero?"_ He took a slow breath. Peered at her, and let the cat go. Sid bounced off the sofa, tail high. _"If we cannot be the damned hero, then what makes life worth living?"_

_"You're right about that,"_ she muttered. _"The heroes are damned. Each and every one of them."_

_"I'm right about a great many things, much of the time. It's something new with me. Being right."_ He winked.

" _When would you like to see your father again?_ "

" _He's depressed_ ," said Draco. " _And he needs a haircut. He needs that more than he needs visitors."_

He was wrong, but Hermione made a note to look into the medical records of Lucius Malfoy, and to arrange for a haircut. Those were things she could easily do.

#

The painting sold at auction for twice Hermione's yearly salary. A critic called Snape out; a mad rush was on to see if paintings bought for bargain prices at second-rate galleries could be his. Authentication was difficult. The auction buyer, for example, had to assume it was Snape's, had to rely on the opinions of others. There was much talk of brush stroke patterns, layering of paint, of the way the signature (F. Dumas on the library canvas, for instance) matched or differed from his typical signature (a ragged S with a line beneath).

She herself followed what little she could find, grainy photos of other, non-official Snape paintings, and made her own determinations. A small market in forged Snapes sprung up.

He had a show in Barcelona, this time as Pua. Six portkeys later, she stood in a winding, narrow alley, watching the artist smoke a cigarette outside the gallery and say something rude in Spanish to two young women. One had a canvas wrapped in paper beneath her arm. She flung it at his feet and left, swaying in tight, turquoise blue jeans. He watched her go.

"She might not have thrown it at you if she'd known who you really are," said Hermione, lifting the package and carefully tearing back the paper. "How much did she pay for this?"

But the woman was back, snatching the canvas and speaking rapid Spanish. After spitting on it, she took the cigarette from his mouth, sucked on it, and dropped it. He shrugged. She took the canvas and marched down the alley.

"I thought you didn't know any languages besides English," she said.

"When did I say that?"

"But you never answer me, or say anything when I'm speaking French."

"You mean when you are shoving an elegant language through the meat grinder of your mouth?"

" _Oui. Why do you not say anything?_ "

He searched, but the packet of cigarettes was empty. He looked at her with malice, as if she'd made them disappear.

At length, he said, "I am able to say a prodigiously long list of unflattering things in fourteen languages."

The woman, far down the alley, slammed the canvas against a wall. Again, and again, until it was in splinters and shreds.

"The coarse and indecent serve you well, I see." After a moment, she said, "I wonder if she knows how much money she has just thrown away."

"She has three more at home, for which she paid full price. She certainly knows."

Hermione let this, and the woman's fury, sink in.

"How is the wine at this one, I wonder?"

"It's Spain," he said, with another elegant shrug. "Like having one's head between a woman's thighs on a hot afternoon, when her husband is away in Portugal on business."

It occurred to her that she could leave. She could be home in a matter of hours. It was a Thursday. Draco would likely be amenable to meeting her, to a late, late dinner. He slept almost all day, and was up most nights, reading. She had to return a book, anyway. Collect a new one.

The woman in turquoise jeans probably had someone to meet. Her husband, maybe.

She left him, went inside the gallery, looked at the small collection suspended on whitewashed stonewalls. There were six, the canvases not as large as he normally preferred, each a study in dazzling pride: for Hogwarts (always), for a street she did not recognize, and for an assembly of potions, a still-life of bottles rendered as a palette, the mahogany table they sat on glowing with depth, its own lake. She could almost reach out, grasp a flask, and stand before him again in third year, afraid, proud, determined.

The crowd filtered in and out. She sat on a bench, determined to translate snippets that she overheard, but struggling. The light changed; he spoke behind her to buyers. The last painting was removed from the wall, carefully wrapped, and gone.

"I think they're onto you," she said.

He took her to a room, up a winding staircase, above a florist. There was only a bed and a table.

"Severus," she said.

He demanded she talk while he undressed her, while he undressed himself, while he stroked himself, his eyes never leaving her mouth.

She sat atop him, back to the narrow door, smelling jasmine hanging outside. His hands cupped her breasts as he kissed her shoulder, bringing her down to him. She whispered in his ear, his single, remaining ear, all the Spanish she had recognized, and those words she didn't.

When it was over, he slept. Without a clock, she watched the stars through the window, feeling them move within her like second hands, like minute hands. She'd need to leave soon; it was imperative not to miss the sequence of portkeys. She'd mapped out timelines, knew exactly how long she could stay. One, one-thirty – no later.

He woke at midnight, pulling on trousers and digging in a knapsack for brushes and paint.

On the walls, he painted teeth.

At least, she thought they were teeth. At half-one, she began to see something else.

" _What did you dream about, those months you were asleep?"_

He was squatting, shading a gray rectangle. "These," he said. "Hundreds of them. They were covered in moss and lichen. I tried to scrape it away, but it grew back."

He'd understood her question. Her eyes narrowed. "I thought you didn't know that much French."

"I said that I spoke a little in fourteen languages. I said nothing about what I understand." He mixed green and black, pressed the brush to the stone on the wall. "I understand quite a bit."

She sat up. "So you've understood everything I said?"

"No. You often mangle words until they are gibberish. For instance, once you spoke about Ron Weasley and his magnificent knitting machine. I assume that he hasn't followed in his hallowed mother's footsteps and started an enterprise in hideous personalized jumpers."

"He hasn't. I might've said that, though. Sometimes I don't know the word I want, so I use something else."

He glanced at her. "That is unacceptable."

She put her bare feet on the floor. "I think it's unacceptable that you've understood perfectly everything I've said, all my questions, and never said anything back. Why? Surely, you don't want to listen to me talk ad infinitum."

He scowled, setting aside his palette and brush and getting to his feet. He stood above her. "I spent an eternity walking among headstones. It was my duty, I knew, to clean them, and every one I uncovered had the name of someone I knew. But every time I scraped off the moss, every patch of nettles I hauled out of the ground with my own hands, every hillock I dug down into to find a stone, a name – every bit of it came back. What sort of eternity is that, even for me? My fingers bled." He held them up. "And it never stopped. If I lie down on the ground, they would grab me, try to pull me down with them. It was cold, the damned mountain, and I could never find my way out with all the fucking fog. And then one day, I curled up to sleep. Let them take me! And when I woke, the fucking ocean was at my feet. Higher and higher, until the entire place is covered in water, every stone, even Harry bloody Potter's—"

"But Harry didn't die."

"Shut. Up. I fell in the water and drowned and then I woke up and I have this gift, this incredible talent, aren't I the lucky one, and _fuck me_ , it only operates when..."

"Severus? When?"

He stared at her. "If you think for one moment that I want to spend the rest of my existence listening to you talk ad infinitum, the answer is no. I would just as soon put my entire head in Nagini's mouth."

"Nothing is forcing you to do this. You told me to talk."

"Your greatest wish, isn't it? A captive audience."

"As I said, nothing—"

"Ah, nothing. How wrong you would be. Everything in my entire life has forced me to do something."

" _Fate_."

"Don't insult me, especially when you don't believe that yourself." He tossed his palette and brush to the floor. "Tell me, girl, if you think that you are free to do as you wish. Tell me that you've got a choice in anything, anything at all. Tell me, Miss Granger, that you could have stayed home tonight, alone in your little flat."

She would not be riled by him. "I've got a choice. And I'm executing it now." Standing, she gathered her clothes as if she were not naked before him, and dressed with perfunctory, 7:30 a.m. lack of charm. She thought of portkeys, of being stranded until dawn in Spain, of contacting her supervisor. There would be surprise. But then, Hermione Granger could do whatever she wanted. Show up for work or not. She was special. If she wanted to fuck a man in Spain and then be altogether absent for work the following day, while stating bald-faced lies about influenza in the summer, so be it.

She turned her face so that he would not see her mouth trembling as teeth ground together. _What power I've got_ , she thought bitterly.

At the door, she paused. What last words for the man who had heard so many already from her, and to whom they meant, apparently, so little?

" _I am not a spear-carrier_ ," she said. " _Though I appeared to be, I never was at all._ "

They only meant something to her, this time, the words. And though she struggled to fully embrace them, something within her glowed, as ancient as a candle floating over a book far past lights-out, in a dormitory where five girls slept and one, one stayed up and dreamed awake of spells and potions and friends.

He did not watch her leave, and the night stretched out in winding cobblestone alleys that all led back to London.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The passage quoted is from one of my favorite books, _Rite of Passage_ by Alexei Panshin. On an immense spaceship in a distant universe, children are tested for permanent residency by being dropped on strange planets during an exceedingly hostile, violent month of Trial. Those that survive are allowed back, to live on the ship. The story is Mia Havero's, and what she comes to understand about compassion and empathy is wholly heartbreaking. 
> 
> I think we each decide, at some point in our lives, if we wish to be the hero of our life, or if we are merely spear carriers. Some of us, sadly, decide we are only spear carriers. Can everyone be the hero? Would that be too much? Too much of the grandiose, the dramatic, the self-centered? I think there are different kinds of heroes, and though it's a struggle, we must remember that about ourselves. To do otherwise is to give up and give in, to settle.
> 
> Whether you saw Hermione Granger as Harry the Hero's helpmeet or as a hero in her own right, you are right. But then, it only matters how Hermione saw herself.
> 
> Today, be the hero of your own life. 
> 
> Peace and love,  
> WJ


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude with Harry.

 

By the time she reached home, Harry was in her lounge. When she had not shown up for work after an hour, a veritable emergency had been declared. As he explained the utter chaos caused by a missing member of the Golden Trio, she panicked, only concerned with the fact that he was surrounded by maps and lists and spools of colored thread and would certainly ask about the strange furnishings.

"Harry, I'm an adult, it's fine for me to miss a day of work sometimes."

"Yes, for most of us. If Ron didn't show up for work, they'd probably wait a day or two. But Hermione Granger doesn't simply not go into work. And if she does, she's got a very good reason, and she would've notified someone." He raised both eyebrows over his glasses.

"I'm sorry I didn't let anyone know. If you could let them know now, I'd be grateful."

"And?"

"And I would invite you to the pub for a drink later? I'd cook dinner, Harry, but I'm awful." She yawned. "Listen, I'm really sorry, but I am completely knackered right now. Could you come back later?"

"And your reason, Hermione, for just coming home at nine-thirty in the morning?"

"Well, Dad..."

"Not funny. Hermione, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Harry. Really, I am. Just tired."

He sat on the arm of her sofa. "We haven't hardly seen each other in months. It's my fault; I've been busy but not that busy. I should've come around more."

"It's okay. I've been busy, too. Look, I really need to get to bed. I'm incredibly tired."

He stood. "Okay. I'll let you get some sleep, and I'll let everyone know that you were out on a bender and are now home, safe and sound and terrifically hung-over."

"That would be stellar, Harry. Please do that."

He grinned. "Great. I'm off. Oh, and... I'll be back later, so we can –" He waved a hand at the surrounding walls. "Talk about all this madness."

She wished she hadn't given him a key, but it was too late, and at least she'd have time to think of a good story.

Except there wasn't one, and her brain hurt too much to think of anything at all, really.

She slept.

 

#

 

When Harry returned – without notice, at half past eight – all of the maps, the pamphlets, the scribbled notes and knots of colored thread, all were gone. Disposed of without ceremony, without even fire, and she'd been sure that at some point a great conflagration would be necessary to see the end of it.

He looked around with suspicion. She took a deep breath.

"I was looking for someone. Sort of. In my spare time."

"A bit of detective work?"

"Yes, but it's finished now. I'm moving on."

He nodded. "So you found him?"

"Or her."

Harry grinned. "I'll never be able to fool you, Hermione."

He'd brought beer, and they talked about other things. Ginny, Ron, who had married who, as if they were both normal young people. He proposed a toast when they opened their third beers.

"To Snape," he said, and Hermione nearly fell over.

"To Severus Snape," she said.

Harry took a drink. "So did you find him?"

She thought that perhaps, much like with Draco, she had misjudged him.

And that he was not damned, or if he was, it did not show on the outside.

"Harry, sometimes," she said quietly, "I have hated you. And loved you beyond words."

He took her hand. "Thank you for telling me that now. And not when we were stuck in that tent. Or when I was copying your homework."

His smile was still quick, still tellingly honest. She smiled back. "Mostly I love you, though."

They sat for a while on her sofa, sipping beer, listening to the cars outside.

"We'll always be friends," he said.

"Yes," she said, because it was true, and because she wanted it to be. At one time, she would have said yes because it was true, and because it was expected. But not because she wanted it to be.

If the abyss were ever to be her friend, it would start now. With small lanterns dropped into darkness, even if they were never to be seen again. If she threw enough of them in and then followed them down, perhaps she would be able to see her way to the other side. She imagined floating, lantern to lantern, across unfathomable space. It was better than the murk that she'd stumbled through for so long.

When he left, he hugged her. "Take another day off. I'll cover for you."

But no, she would be back at her desk tomorrow. No more muddle-headedness, no treacherous fantasies, no more Port-Keys to trouble. She kissed his cheek and didn't bother to memorize the smell of him, for she knew that he would be back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: "Interlude with Harry" sounds like a lovely song. Something by Debussy. ;)
> 
> Sorry it's a short one. I'll be back in two days with something more substantial. 
> 
> Those who continue to read, and especially to those who leave Kudos and comments: Thank you!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone deserves access to a library.

9.

Draco was only too happy to see her standing on his doorstep, a bottle of soft-as-peaches chardonnay in her hand. The door had swirled with milky skies when she'd knocked, raspberry and gold streaking through the clouds.

He crushed her with his hug.

While she put down the books she'd borrowed, he prattled on in excitement; his father had been granted letter-writing privileges, and taken advantage of his new privileges to write every single day for a week. Draco let her read a few; they started out stilted, to his "dear son," and converted into lists of improvements to the prison (food, food, a proper tailor, carpeting in cells, ornamentation, a larger library, food, and roast on Sunday with horseradish). They were each signed, "Your loving father." Each one asked when Draco would be visiting again.

Sunday roast for convicted Death Eaters seemed reasonable, Hermione thought. She'd see what she could accomplish on that front. She had, indeed, looked into the matter of Lucius's depression, but been met with incredulous stares. Of course! Every prisoner in Azkaban was depressed! They were in Azkaban, for Merlin's sake! And cheering charms, the distribution of Pepper-Up, or anything to positively alter a prisoner's mood was forbidden. That, she was afraid, was simply a part of imprisonment. The library, however, was something absolutely non-negotiable. Everyone, even disciples of a Dark Lord, deserved to read.

"Have you lent your father any of your books?"

Draco scoffed. "Please, if he knew what Muggle rubbish I read, he'd disown me."

"And if he knew that you occasionally spend an evening with me?"

"He'd chisel under the floor, tunnel to the coast, and walk barefoot to London to personally strangle me."

Hermione smiled. "Then you're being quite the rebellious son."

Draco paused, seeming discomfited. "I don't want to be rebellious."

"Well, no," Hermione said. "I don't mean... How's your mother these days?"

"Horrible." He scowled. "She's in Rennes. The city doesn't suit her at all, but she says the 'air' is better there."

The 'air' in Rennes was probably a good deal younger than Narcissa, or was a great deal wealthier. That was probably it, Hermione decided. For all that she loved her son, since she had been released from Azkaban – with nary a look back at the black walls that still enclosed her husband – Narcissa had disappeared from England. What Hermione recalled about Narcissa was a woman who prided herself on possessions, on appearance, on status – a woman who would not enjoy her new caste, penniless and disdained.

Of their small family, only Draco seemed to rebuff scorn and poverty with ease. It was difficult to imagine the boy she'd known walking with such assurance into the Ministry in slightly tatty clothes, and going home to a small flat in an awful neighborhood as though it was yet the mansion he'd grown up in.

But despite whatever maturity he'd gained since then, he was back to petulant Draco at the moment, she could see.

"I was reading Pohl last night, and I had trouble translating a passage." It was not true, but as hoped, Draco's attention turned.

"Show me."

She opened one of the returned books to a random page, skimmed for something decent, and handed it to him.

He scoffed. "Honestly, Hermione, this is child's play. I can't believe how long it's taking you to learn French. I was speaking it when I was six. Of course, I had a French nanny that year. Was it six? Or was that the Swedish nanny? Well, six or seven, anyway."

She gritted her teeth. "It is simpler for a young child to learn a foreign language. Their minds are like sponges, easily grasping languages besides their own."

He spoke the passage in French, and handed the book back to her. She spoke it with flawless precision.

"There! You just needed to hear me say it first." He shook his head. "Well, Hermione Granger can't be head of the class in everything, can she?"

The benefits of wine were clearer than ever. She drank half a glass. Mr. I-Had-A-French-Nanny read aloud from the book where they'd left off, prattling on in French so perfect she wanted to ask him, in English, if any of his nannies had ever turned his backside red as a tomato. It seemed unlikely, but the thought made her happy.

She realized with a start that it didn't matter, any longer, if she could speak French well or not. Firstly, Snape understood her, and so a theory she'd been percolating that perhaps he wanted company, that she was more or less like a radio in the background while one worked, was null and void. And secondly...

Secondly, she didn't intend to see Snape again.

So there was that.

She looked at Draco, wandering about his tiny lounge with book in hand. Sid was his captive audience, and as disdainful as Snape.

But if she didn't need him to teach her French, why see him at all?

"If your father doesn't read science fiction, then what does he read?"

Draco stopped walking and frowned. "You interrupted me. Well, he prefers the usual, grimoires and manuals of _sorts horribles_. Robber fiction."

"Robber fiction?"

"Yes, you know. A man is in love with a woman, but she belongs to another, so he steals her and makes her his. Love stories, but with a specific theme."

"I see. That seems misogynistic and awful." Hermione tapped a finger on the coffee table. "Well, I'm not sure about the fiction. And grimoires are probably not appropriate reading for the populace of a wizard prison. But we could probably find a decent amount of books to give to Azkaban's library."

"Really? Where?"

Hermione smiled. "As it happens, I know of an abandoned library here in England."

Abandoned, yes – the owner of the library had long given up the books and, indeed, the very house they were shelved in, in order to pick up a brush and paint in some anonymity, away from the wizarding world. She'd let Draco know the identity of the library's owner later. In the meantime, she sat back, listening to Draco speak French to Sid, telling him what a perfect, perfect cat he was.

*

On Saturday morning, after coming from two hours of work in order to catch up on the day she'd missed, she arrived at Draco's flat to find the door another merry cloudscape. She was no longer sure whose temperament it reflected, the knocker's or the flat's resident, nor why it should exist at all, but it didn't seem to matter. Snape had charmed an electric teakettle, and she didn't question that, either. It was the best teakettle she'd ever owned.

"I'd like to take you somewhere," she said, sipping the scalding hot coffee he offered. "Do you trust me?"

"I've been in scarier places than some old library," he said.

"It's not the where, exactly, but how we get there. It's... not the bus." She reached a tentative hand for his arm.

"Oh," he said, blinking.

"Is it all right? It's just that, it's very far, and I'd rather not take a train, and I understand that this might be strange for you."

"Strange? I learned to Apparate when I was fifteen. They wouldn't let me take the test until later, of course. Passed on my first try."

"Of course. Ready?"

He snuggled rather closer than was necessary, and said, "Are you allowed to perform magic with my sort?"

"Your sort probably shouldn't be allowed within a mile of my sort," she said, and winked.

Draco laughed, and as she determined her destination and the world began to spin, she had a passing thought that Draco's sort was rubbing off on her. And that it wasn't a truly terrible thing.

 

*

Draco frowned at the house.

"Do you know where we are?" she asked.

He waved an arm at her and made a noise in his throat. She nodded once and strode up to the front door, where the usual manner of detritus needed removing: dead flowers and tightly folded notes from admirers, knife blades broken off in the door, and "Trator" and "Die Snap" carved into the wood. She vanished the entire lot and repaired the door, mildly amused and wondering if Draco knew German, too, and could translate "Die Snap." The Snap? It was a wonder that the Death Eater organization had progressed as far as it had. Then again, bullying and underhandedness did not necessarily require literacy. Witness Crabbe and Goyle.

"How's Gregory?"

Draco's stare didn't move from the house. "Goyle? Fine, I suppose. Haven't seen him since... You know."

"You were released the same day, weren't you?" The door opened at Hermione's touch and swung in. The scent of old books and musty carpet floated out. She had to admit that she loved it, just a touch.

Draco stepped inside, hands in the pockets of his green velvet coat. "No, he got out a day before me. Thought he'd come back to see me the next, so we could, I don't know, get a pint together or go razz old ladies in a park somewhere. Something. I don't know."

"But he didn't?" Hermione flicked her wand, lighting two lamps in Snape's lounge. "Come back, I mean."

"No."

"So what did you do the day you were released?"

Draco stopped staring around the room with sullenness, and faced her. "I took the two Galleons they gave me and went to the nearest pub and got absolutely pissed with a woman named Barbara, who let me fuck the shit out of her in her stinking pisshole of a flat."

"And that worked so well that you decided to continue the tradition on a more or less weekly basis."

He shrugged. "Not with Barbara, though. She was a freak. We've all got our perversions, but come on. Even I won't do some things."

He reached for a book, and Hermione slapped his hand. "Snape's got booby traps all over the place. You can touch anything on those shelves over there, but these books bite, so be careful. A few of the ones on the floor are decoys. Make certain it's a real book you're picking up, and not some illusion. I thought a history of the usage of pond algae was real, until I got it home and it was a mummified mouse."

Draco looked at her, incredulous. "All of these books, and you took home a book about pond scum? I really should've brought you some of my collection earlier." He wandered away, hands in his pockets.

Wandless was not the same as without magic, or without a sense of magic. For a while, she kept discreet watch on Draco, but his fingers touched lightly over the spines without danger. He avoided some, plucked others with confidence from their spots and flipped through their pages. They stacked their choices in the middle of the floor.

When she'd first begun her search for Snape, she'd delved deep into his library, believing there was something of the man in all this paper and leather. But something was missing, an awareness or tangible knowledge. As if she'd gone to the pepperbush, and all the peppercorns were gone. Off-season.

He was truly not here.

Which did not decrease her appreciation of the collection, but once again, she'd been left with a feeling of detachment. All her life, she'd been searching for a connection, striving so hard, so earnestly, to make those connections that she was often left frazzled and ever unfulfilled. Which made her...

Just another person. Not special, not different, not really.

And having found him, having been more industrious and impassioned than she had in years, had she made that connection, at last?

She tossed another book on the pile. Histories, she supposed, were suitable for Azkaban. Maybe there was something for the inmates to learn in them. Even if, in _Miller's Handbook to the Dark Wizards of Eastern Europe, 1575-1850_ , they learned how to amass followers, like the charismatic Ferenc Gero, or how not to build a fortress, like the barely-underground-dwelling Alexander Bal, who believed in traveling only via trenches. He spent so much time on his army of giant earthworms that when a forest was finally toppled by their efforts, he was crushed beneath a tree and, ultimately, became fodder for his fat, undulating construction crew.

One must learn from history. Giant earthworms: lovely to look at, but probably difficult to train, and the engineering involved in excavation did not excite her.

Her recent history suggested, however, that relationships could be built by sincerity and enjoyment of similar things.

Although his typical reading was far different from Snape's library, Draco appeared absorbed in one tome after another. She smiled. His face when reading became slack with engrossment, all artifice falling away. It revealed another Draco, a young man with too many lines around his mouth and beneath his eyes, and the soft mouth and brows of one interested in something. Like a boy, digging for earthworms. He had probably never done that. She opened her mouth to ask him, and a card fell from Miller's book onto her lap.

The black and white printing was grainy, almost blurring the announcement. But beneath, in precise, black handwritten script, were the words:

_What are you doing in my house?_

She stared at the card, at the date – for the coming weekend – at the event – a gallery opening for one M. M. Kipling, and slowly, carefully, rose from her seat in Snape's armchair and walked to the door and opened it.

"Hermione? Where are you going?"

Her heart thundered in her chest as she scanned the street. It was empty but for a long-haired cat trotting along the pavement.

A flash of black.

It could've been smoke, or swirling leaves, or her imagination.

Draco peered over her shoulder. "Is someone out there?" he asked, voice low.

She stepped back and closed the door. "No," she said. "No one."

Miller's book lie on the chair, the card tucked inside. "I think I'll finish this one at home," she said, and put it in her bag.

"All right," Draco said, nodding. "I've got one I want to finish, too. In the meantime, the rest can go to my father."

"To Azkaban," she said.

"Yes," he said. "To Azkaban."

There were boxes in the basement, which Hermione retrieved so Draco wouldn't be trapped in Snape's ridiculous moving labyrinth, and they loaded the books into them. She spelled them to be light enough to carry, and they took them out onto the street and Disapparated.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: We are rapidly nearing the end. 
> 
> That is all.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last chance to try and touch a shadow.

 

Her heart pounded.

She and Draco had brought the books back to her office at the Ministry, labeled them for the Azkaban library program, and before they'd left, she'd found a note on her chair:

_Those are MY books!_

She'd told Draco she'd be right behind him, she just had to finish a few forms, and taking a deep breath, she hastily wrote underneath:

_Per Ministry of Magic ruling 11-A78, 1999 Dec. 18, abandoned properties belonging to wizards and witches_

A new scrawl appeared:

_I know the fucking law! Those are my books!_

Hermione wrote:

_I don't believe you do know the law. Your former residence_

A sizzle sounded to her left, and she jumped, snatching her wand.

Behind Snape, the door slammed shut.

"Before you decide to enlighten me, Miss Granger, let me assure you that I am as familiar with the Ministry's numerous laws as I am with that bit of flesh just below your left arse cheek, upon which a small mole exists and which will not exist when I am finished flaying it from you if you do not, at once, return my property."

She trembled, caught it, and stared back at him. "I understand your annoyance—"

"Annoyance? Annoyance is Hermione Granger with her hand stuck in the air again and again, until all you want to do is chop it off and feed it to Hagrid."

"...You mean Hagrid's dragon."

"No. I mean stuff it down his giant throat until he chokes on it and two annoyances are extinct." He stepped around her desk. She took an involuntary step back. "I am not annoyed, Miss Granger. I am not infuriated. I am pissed off beyond all possible belief."

"Severus—"

"What, pray tell, possessed you to enter my home and steal my property? And with Draco Malfoy, of all people." He cocked his head. "Did you think that if you took Draco along with you, that I wouldn't mind? That if you had him, you had some sort of insurance? Let me clarify something for you, Miss Granger. Draco Malfoy received all I had to give in the way of protection and guidance and yet somehow, like some other impulsive, ignorant little brat, managed to fuck things up for himself."

"I dare say Harry did not fuck things up for anyone," she said. "Well, except for Vol—"

"DON'T say his name." He advanced on her, and lowered his voice. "Do not ever say his name in my presence. In fact, I'd like it very much if you never said another word in my presence again." He squinted. "Did you learn French from Draco? Is that where you went for advanced teaching? Did you fuck him too, in payment?"

She bristled, her own voice lowering to a dangerous level. "Who I sleep with is my own business, but tell me, Severus, what did I pay for? I have not a single painting of yours. No one knows of our involvement, and I am sure that if they did, it would not in any way improve my position. Aside from those obvious facts, here is another: If you wish to make me out as some sort of prostitute, you had better tread carefully."

"Tread carefully? Will you use your wand on me, Hermione?" He stood straight, looking down his nose at her. "Please," he whispered. "Please, pull your wand."

For a moment, she stood there blinking, unsure what he wanted. Did he want her to challenge him? Did he wish to battle her? For what? The entire situation had gone so terribly awry, and she was in such deep, strange waters, that the inside of her mouth felt like cotton.

She reached for her wand, drew it, and slowly set it on her desk.

"Now we are even," she said.

"We will never be even," he said.

"If you want your books back," she said, "you can apply to reverse the seizure."

"That would involve making my presence known again here in London, wouldn't it?" He sniffed. "I think not. I didn't want anyone in the wizarding population to ever know of my existence. It was a mistake, talking to you for even one moment."

"You barely spoke to me, Severus." She sighed. "The books are going to Azkaban. Lucius wrote to Draco and told him that they needed a better library."

"So you immediately volunteered my collection. A collection started by my mother, that I carefully curated for over thirty years, to be donated against my will to a rotted lot of Death Eaters." He picked one up, a soft leather-bound copy of _Hampton Marsh: Poisonous Aquatics_. "Do pick up your wand, Hermione. Kill me now."

Hermione knew there were things that needed to be acknowledged, but she couldn't. Not right then. Later, when she was home, alone, and had time to sort them out.

"Do you think," she said, "that you will ever need them again?"

He set the book down and looked at her. Touched the shining knot of scars along the left side of his neck.

"Everything I need, I have left behind." He waved his hand, and the _Hampton Marsh_ book flung open. His fingers skimmed down the page. "I don't know why I didn't die. Or wasn't left on that mountainside in Purgatory. Perhaps it was because a worse punishment awaited me here."

Hermione had the sad thought that she was his punishment, and that seemed unfair, when it was likely she was living within her own punishment, anyway. Where was Crooks? A shadow she saw from time to time. Where were her friends? The same. She was living among shadows, and it was impossible to touch a shadow.

The two of them stood in her small, junior associate office, surrounded by books that neither of them were interested in any longer, wearing identical faces of defeat.

She understood, in that instant, that they were all three—she, Draco, and Snape—searching for meaning. Connection. And that they all struggled the same.

"I was on a beach, somewhere by Aberdeen, when I knew you'd woken up."

"Aberdeen?" he murmured. "Hellish. Were there any tourists?"

"It was January, remember?" She paused. "Three days after your birthday."

"Was that when you knew you wanted to give away all my earthly possessions?"

"No, that came later. I'm still working out what to do with that strange collection of rusted biscuit tins in the kitchen."

"My mother thought the pictures on the tins hid messages from deceased relatives." He shrugged. "She was losing it a bit, there at the end."

"Oh," said Hermione, because there was nothing else to say about a loony mother. Her own mother was only loony about Hermione's marital status, or more specifically, about the road from marriage to children. She thought about telling her that the only two prospects at the moment were both Slytherins, ex-communicated from the greater wizarding community, and one an artist, to boot. It might send her off into proper loony.

If Hermione didn't beat her there, first.

"Severus, I'm sorry for taking your books without asking. I think... I think I did it because I knew you would find out."

"Give them all to the Death Eaters, Hermione. In fact, take whatever you want out of the house and give it to the suffering children of imprisoned Death Eaters." He scowled and rubbed his forehead. "Neither Draco nor Potter ever listened to me, ever did as I told them. I beg you not to do the same: Hermione, there are ghosts everywhere. Learn to ignore them."

Ghosts. Yes.

She nodded.

She would ignore the ghosts, look away from the abyss.

It was all in front of her, a thousand days and nights, and this day, this moment, mattered most of all.

Severus was gone in a wisp of black smoke. She reached for it, fingers passing through. Last chance to try and touch a shadow.

She left the proper forms on her desk, for transferring the books to Azkaban.

And next to it, she left her resignation.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: One tiny bit more, that's all that is left. And then we leave behind all that is necessary.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One last night at the gallery, and then an epilogue.

 

Draco had been oblivious as to Snape's presence at both the house in Spinner's End and at Hermione's office. Three days later, they took the Underground, Draco changing Tubes with expert ease. He caught her nervousness, mistaking it for excitement, in his hands, juggling it with jokes and light touches to the shoulder, uncaring as to where they were headed.

"Art. Muggle art." He feigned a dramatic yawn. "I shall perish of boredom before we get there. You know, if you wanted to find something more elitist or arrogant, you couldn't do better than art. And I say this as someone who grew up in a home positively bogged down in the stuff."

"Art? Or arrogance and elitism?"

"All of that and more."

"And now your home's just decorated in cat hair and science fiction."

"Yes. It makes the girls' knickers absolutely disintegrate upon entry." He put an arm around her. "Not yours, of course. You've got those cast iron knickers, double-locked."

She smiled. Clueless Draco! It was fun to have her secrets, even if they were rather odd.

He was still chattering as they walked up to the gallery, still prattling on about this or that (she'd stopped listening a Tube ago, ears stuffed with so much anticipation that every word he'd said was too far away to hear), and still jostling her inappropriately when he opened the door, stepped in behind her, and strode up to the first painting.

"Ha! Look at this one. It looks like Madam Rosmerta. And there's her tits."

"That's because it is Madam Rosmerta's tits, you idiot," said a voice behind them.

Slowly, Draco began to turn around.

"This is a different show for you, Severus," said Hermione, taking in the pieces. "Very... blue."

One side of his mouth curved up. "I got weary of landscapes."

The shock had drained from Draco's face, replaced by a beet red flush and a snarl. "What the hell is this?" He turned to Hermione. "I thought he was dead."

"No. He left St. Mungo's, but no one said he was dead."

Draco stared at Snape, who stared back.

"My father's in Azkaban, you know," he said.

Snape nodded. "I know," he said quietly.

"And you're not."

"Should I be?" Snape wore a black t-shirt and jacket, which he smoothed with one hand. "Which would you prefer, my immediate demise or my imprisonment?"

"Do you think because you got a bit maimed and you were a double agent that somehow you deserve to be just walking around, like a normal person?"

"Normalcy has no claim on any of us here, Draco." He shrugged. "As to what I deserve, I can't say I know, anymore than I know what you deserve, or your father, or anyone at all."

Draco frowned, stuck his hands in his pockets, and glared at everyone around them. After half a minute of this, he said, "Well, of the three of us, Hermione's certainly the least normal."

Snape raised an eyebrow. "You don't know the half of it."

"Wait—what? I'm not traipsing around Europe, using different identities and... and..."

"And what, Hermione?" Snape scowled. "Painting my way towards a fortune? Becoming a legendary artist? Working diligently towards promotion in a rat's maze of bureaucracy?"

"I'm not working diligently towards promotion. In fact," she said, "I'm not working at all. I quit."

"Quit? When?" said Draco.

"A few days ago. I realized that I couldn't see myself continuing on in the Ministry, going in day after day, writing reports and filing them and signing my name to a thousand pieces of parchment that don't mean a damned thing to anyone." She shook her head. "I buried myself in meaningless paperwork so that I wouldn't have to live my life."

Snape smiled, a bit of crooked teeth showing. "Interesting."

She shrugged. "Wait until my mother finds out. Then it will become really interesting."

"Well," said Draco. "If you can't find a job, you can always come bunk with me."

"I'm sure I will find a job. When I find one I want."

And she was sure. She could absolutely, positively say with one hundred percent assurance that someday, she would find something that she wanted to do, something that intrigued her, impassioned her, even. It was a strange thought, entwining passion with one's work, especially when one wasn't sure what one was passionate about.

But there was the finding of one's passion. A tickling thought constantly threatened to burst through her serious conscious, that a marvelous journey could be had, just by setting off down a different road. Standing in the gallery, it announced itself with a flutter in her chest, a very un-Hermione-like flourish of cymbals and horns. And, suddenly, she realized she was quite excited about the prospect.

They stood there, the three of them, Draco's bottom lip bull-dogging while his hands buried themselves in his trousers pockets (maroon corduroy trousers with too-high bell bottoms and, of course, a bit of lace from his socks peeking between corduroy and leather boots). Severus stared at her, head cocked, as if seeing her for the first time.

Hermione waited for things to work themselves out, for old knots to untie and crisp, new ones to lace together.

It could take time. But then, Draco and Severus had become more adept at change, at acceptance and finding their way among the new.

She had a lot to learn. In a gallery, surrounded by more pairs of bare tits than she had ever expected to see in a lifetime, with two ex-communicated wizards, and completely jobless—

It was a start.

She smiled and took a glass of wine from a harried waiter, turned away as Severus sneered at a stout older woman who'd come to offer up her admirations, and came face to face with her own portrait.

Sleeping on a moss-covered bench, surrounded by teakettles and creeping vines, that Hermione Granger smiled at some unknown pleasant dream.

Her tits were magnificent.

 

*

 

**Epilogue**

 

"I can't, Draco, I've got to finish this."

Sid stepped across the keyboard. _Zzzzzz_ s and _gggggggg_ s dashed across the page.

"Thank you, Sid!" Draco grinned. "Now read this."

Hermione sighed, took the proffered stack of papers, and began to read.

He was—good.

It was good. Thirty-two chapters in, and she could see Draco had a genuine talent. He often wrote well into the night, slept for a few hours, and woke again at five to write more. It coincided with Severus's hours, more or less. Both of them were night owls, creative well after dusk, and slept most of the day. She'd begun to associate the rapid-fire click of the keyboard with the smell of turpentine and paint.

She'd begun to associate ten a.m. with the musky smell of Severus, naked against her in their small bed.

At the moment, all of those thoughts disappeared, replaced by the scratch of a quill as she red-lined and red-marked Draco's manuscript, turning it into the sea of red he accepted so cavalierly. She had to admire him. A single red mark on any of her work at Hogwarts had reduced her to a stomp.

Reduced. She'd grown so much since those days. Since her days at the Ministry, even. In the last four months.

Twenty-four was right around the corner, and she expected there would be a party. They'd even convened with Harry, which meant it would be something rather large. There had even been a strange phone call with her mother, in which Hermione suspected they'd spoken to her, too.

She didn't want it. Had told them as much. Repeatedly. They both gave her perfectly Slytherin blank stares that suggested their innocence, which meant they were absolutely guilty of party-planning.

Their birthdays would be her revenge.

In the meantime, there was a novel to edit for Draco and the occasional gallery night for Severus, and she had a blog on a prominent science fiction and fantasy site to keep up. Hermione wrote well-balanced, reasoned reviews of novels, new and old, classics or pulp, whatever she came across. She and Draco were active in the forums, as well, discussing everything sci-fi and fantasy with other members. She even ran a monthly flash fiction contest, which she assured Draco he would never, ever win, due to her not wanting to seem to give him preference.

There might, perhaps, even be a bit of a novel she was fleshing out, but for the present, she was content to keep it secret.

And because the abyss must be filled to the brim with more than entertainment, she'd taken on something of a real passion: prisoner rights. It was, frankly, an unpopular position, which in a rather subversive way, made it all the more exciting.

It helped, too, that her name was Hermione Granger. She'd come to accept its weight, and to understand how to use it in order to make the world a slightly better place. There was no roast beef on Sundays for prisoners of Azkaban, but there was pudding on an earned privilege basis.

Lucius Malfoy, head librarian of the Azkaban book depository, had earned pudding twelve Sundays in a row.

She handed the manuscript back to Draco, and he flipped through, questioning her. A spirited debate arose, and on the other side of the room, Severus Snape wiped the juice from the plum he'd been eating from his chin and picked up a brush.

Persimmon. Pine. A dab of tangerine.

The words they spoke had such color, such beauty.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Severus Snape awoke from his coma with a peculiar condition: synesthesia. Since synesthesia may refer broadly to one cognitive sense being translated into another, he has, more specifically, chromesthesia, in which sounds are translated into color. While he was intrigued by the colors Hermione's voice produced, he requested her to speak another language so that he would not have to understand her, but merely see the colors, which he then translated into paint on canvas. Of course, he did reveal eventually that he understood bits of other languages, but it was still probably easier for him when she spoke mangled French.
> 
> How, exactly, he spent the years between his awakening and Hermione's finding of him is a mystery.
> 
> Thank you for reading along, and I hope you enjoyed this work.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This story is finished and will be posted regularly. 
> 
> Although written while attempting to deal with my own recurring depression, this story in no way makes any attempt to accurately portray anyone's experience with depression except for the purely fictional Hermione Granger in a non-canon way.
> 
> My thanks to A for first reading this. A stands for aperture: the opening, the passageway, the friend you see when you peer into a cardboard roll and see another eye at the other end, and you know it is smiling at you.
> 
> May you all have a friend like A.


End file.
